Showboat: All Aboard for 2012

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Even as the Showboat
Majestic opens another show this summer (The Art of Murder by
Joe DiPietro kicks off tonight and continues through Aug. 28), it’s
time to announce the ’boat’s 90th season in 2012, featuring an all-American slate of musicals and comedies to please patrons aboard
America’s last showboat, a National Historic Landmark. Here’s the
2012 season:

Babes
in Hollywood – The Music of Garland and Rooney (May
16 – June 3, 2012). Created by David Grapes,
this revue offers more than 30 great songs from the 20th century,
including American classics such as “Over the Rainbow,” “You
Made me Love You,” “Easter Parade,” “On the Sunny Side of the
Street,” “Meet Me in St. Louis,” “That’s Entertainment”
and “Come Rain or Come Shine”

Arsenic and Old Lace
(June 13 – July 1, 2012). A classic comedy from the 1940s (best
known as a 1944 film featuring Cary Grant), the play features two
charming and proper elderly women who populate their cellar with the
remains of lonely roomers. Adding to the chaos are their brothers,
one who thinks he’s Teddy Roosevelt and another who’s a real
murder. Their beleaguered nephew Mortimer hopes to marry a regular
girl despite the lunacy they encounter.

George M! (July 11
– July 29, 2012). That’s shorthand for George M. Cohan, whose
life story is the framework of this musical revue. Cohan, a giant of
the American musical theater, gave us songs like “Yankee Doodle
Dandy,” “Over There,” “You're A Grand Old Flag” and “Give
My Regards to Broadway.” We follow Cohan for 60 years, from his
childhood in Rhode Island on the vaudeville circuit with his family
to New York, where he reigned over the Broadway stage for a
quarter-century.

Rounding Third (August
8 – August 26, 2012). Richard Dresser’s play is about two coaches
— one a veteran, the other a new recruit — and their markedly
different personal circumstances and philosophies about the game.
It’s a funny, acerbic play about fatherhood and baseball.

The Music Man
(September 12 – September 30, 2012). Another American classic —
not to mention the 1957 Tony Award-winning best musical, the show is
a tribute to life in small towns in America. The central character is
fast-talking traveling salesman Harold Hill who cons the people of
River City, Iowa, into buying instruments and uniforms for a boys
band he will organize, despite the fact he doesn’t know anything
about music. His scheme goes awry when he falls in love with Marian
the Librarian.